REVIEW – The Gruesome Twosome

Published on: 27th November, 2009

REVIEW – The Gruesome Twosome  | read this item

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Herschell Gordon Lewis had never been known for his subtly. Having conquered the ‘nudie cutie’ genre with Living Venus (loosely based on the life of Playboy’s Hugh Hefner), Nature’s Playmates and Boin-n-g in the early 1960s, Lewis and his producing partner, David F. Friedman, then turned their attention to gore with Blood Feast, supposedly the world’s first splatter movie. Over the next decade, Lewis would subject audiences to all manner of grizzly exploitationers, from Two Thousand Maniacs! and Color Me Blood Red to the notorious cult classic The Wizard of Gore, before suddenly retiring from the industry for thirty years, eventually resurfacing with 2002’s Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat. Following on from 1967’s A Taste of Blood, Lewis produced what was arguably his most unpleasant and sleazy picture, The Gruesome Twosome.

Several beautiful young women studying at a college have mysteriously disappeared, falling victim of the sweet-yet-sinister Mrs. Pringle (Elizabeth Davis). With the help of her simple son, Rodney (Chris Martell), Pringle has been abducting and scalping her victims, luring them in with the aid of a ‘room for rent’ sign advertised in her window. There is a method to her madness, however, as she only chooses girls with the finest hair as stock for her Little Wig Shop business. Concerned that her fellow students may be in trouble, Kathy (Gretchen Wells) sets out to uncover the truth, only to risk becoming the Pringles’ next donor.

As with every other Lewis/Friedman production, The Gruesome Twosome suffers from the usual issues with inept acting, terrible script and pedestrian directing. Most of the cast were first-timers and some, such as the case of Wells, would chose not to act again. Thus, the performances are abysmal and not even the villains are able to act convincingly. The dialogue is also at its usual poor standard, with Mrs. Pringle regularly talking with her stuffed cat Napoleon. By far the most annoying sequence is the opening credits, in which two mannequin heads talk to each other, in a scene that was clearly added in an effort to boost the film’s running time.

The Gruesome Twosome may appeal to fans of 1960s camp charm, with pointless dance routines and an overabundance of pretty girls. But those who are unfamiliar with Lewis’ quality of work and only know him by reputation (as the ‘Godfather of Gore’) will be disappointed by the films themselves, which more often than not fail to live up to their legacy. The feeble story is strung together with little characterization or style, with an amateur script once again from Blood Feast’s Allison Louise Downe (who at the time was married to the director).

Where the movie does score points, however, is with the truly revolting special effects, in which Rodney’s young victims are shown in close-up being slowly scalped as he slices their hair from their blood-soaked heads with his knife. Far more nauseating than what was presented in Blood Feast, the scenes of violence are at times genuinely unsettling and are the film’s only truly effective elements. Ostensibly a feature-length set piece for the gory makeup, the effects are amongst the most convincing of Lewis’ career (alongside The Wizard of Gore). Fans of splatter will at least find something to enjoy in between the scenes of talking and dancing.

Lewis’ fifth splatter movie (following on from Blood Feast, Two Thousand Maniacs!, Color Me Blood Red and A Taste of Blood) to be shot in between a stream of nudie and roughies, The Gruesome Twosome showed little sign of the filmmaker progressing as an artist or storyteller, but did demonstrate what an intelligent businessman and marketing genius he was (hence his later career as a leading figure in the world of marketing). By today’s standards, the film fails on all counts but it is easy to see how this would have shocked audiences forty years ago, if not by the graphic violence then by the truly awful acting.

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